In the spring of 1926, a new name — the Spartans — began appearing in print. It wasn’t the official nickname of Michigan State College (what is now Michigan State University). And it hadn’t won the official naming contest meant to decide it. But it would soon take hold.
One hundred years later, the name has evolved into much more than a nickname for MSU’s athletics teams. Being a Spartan means being a part of something bigger. It’s how alums for generations have identified themselves and signifies to the world our uncommon will.
How the nickname came to be, it turns out, is slightly uncommon too.
‘A nickname has descended’
On April 13, 1926, George S. Alderton, then the editor of the Lansing State Journal, wrote one of his “Sport Antic Dope” columns. In it, he declared: “Out of a clear sky, a nickname has descended upon the Michigan State College athletic camp.”
The chosen name? Spartans.
For historical context, in 1925, Michigan State College replaced the institution’s previous name of Michigan Agriculture College — one of six name changes that eventually led to Michigan State University. The college sponsored a contest to replace the “Aggies” nickname and picked “The Michigan Staters.” Alderton thought the name to be cumbersome and, according to reports, he asked to see other entries from the contest. He found “Spartans” and thought the name would fit. He was right.
After he introduced the nickname in his April 13 column, it would soon appear in more stories, eventually overtaking headlines and working its way into the Lansing Capital News, a rival of the Lansing State Journal. Soon enough, the State News, the school’s student newspaper, also began referring to student-athletes as Spartans.
Throughout history, this was the story that was passed down. An MSU Athletics story relays the tale, adding, “Unfortunately, Alderton forgot to write down who submitted [the “Spartans” entry], so that part of the story remains a mystery.”
It was a mystery we wanted to solve. We investigated library archives, microfilm and more hoping to find something. We even ran into some dead ends.
A column with clues
A Lansing State Journal op-ed from 2018 suggested a friend of Alderton had planted the idea. According to the Scofes family, who have been in the Lansing area for over a century, Stephen Scofes, who owned a restaurant in Lansing in the 1920s, had said Spartans would be a good name to his friend. That friend happened to be Alderton.
While the story is plausible, it did not fit Alderton’s narrative about finding the name when looking through contest entries.
So, we looked back at Alderton’s first column that mentioned the Spartans in hopes of finding more.
“‘Spartans’ is the sobriquet that will, as long as this writer can successfully wrestle his typewriter, or until he is convinced otherwise, be attached the wearers of the Green and White,” the April 13, 1926, story read. The next sentence piqued our interest: “Inasmuch as our southern correspondents chose to christen the baseball team as Spartans, the good work may as well go on.”
Southern correspondents? Alderton was giving credit to the originator when debuting Spartans, but he did not name the correspondent. Who in the south had called the team the Spartans?
The first record of ‘Spartans’
As it turns out, that April 13 article was not the first time MSU was officially declared the Spartans. In fact, there were two mentions in game reports prior to the historical column. On April 3, the subheading of a story claimed “three Spartons hit triples,” the day after it had first appeared spelled the same way.
Two days later, a headline following an early season Michigan State baseball game read: “State Plays Errorless Ball Behind Wakefield, Wins 1-0.” The subheading to the piece spelled Spartans correctly: “Kobsmen show mid-season form in downing Mercer University — Don Haskins raps out three of Spartans’ Bingles.” (John Kobs was the MSU coach at the time, hence the “Kobsmen” in the headline. “Bingles” was baseball slang at the time for a one-base hit, commonly referred to now as a single.)
In the body of the story, MSU’s baseball team was described as the “northern Spartans.”
It seemed we had found the correspondent. The only problem? The author was unlisted. The story had a byline that read “Special to The State Journal.”
Another dead end. Or was it?
According to MSU Athletics, Alderton used to write about the baseball team with a little help from a player on the team. Perry Fremont was a catcher on the team who sent game reports to Alderton. At the end of the piece describing the team’s 1-0 win, the report read: “Perry Fremont, the visitors’ catcher, sustained a bad finger bruise during the game but found it possible to continue to play.”
Fremont may have injured his finger that day, but he also showed his Spartan Will, not only by continuing in the game but by perhaps aiding Alderton in coming up with a nickname that has lasted a century — and surely will for many more years to come.
Spartans for life
There was, however, one more twist in the saga of who originally coined the Spartans nickname. We contacted Athletics to see if they had any more information, and they shared a section of the Spartan Sports Encyclopedia, a work by Jack Siebold.
In the encyclopedia, Siebold interviewed Alderton about the origin of the name. According to the 1993 interview, Alderton had asked Fremont to write game stories. In Fremont’s first report, Alderton said, “I noticed that Perry had used the name Aggies. Right then I thought, we have to have a better name than that.” Alderton reworked the story and named the baseball team the “Spartons” on April 2 and 3, 1926 (which we were able to find, misspelling included, in the Lansing State Journal archives). After a call from a history professor at MSU who corrected Alderton's spelling for the April 5 story, it was Spartans from then on out.
There may not be a definitive answer to who exactly came up with the Spartans nickname; but there is no doubt that Alderton led the charge — even if he had some help along the way.
No matter who came up with the moniker, what isn’t debated is that for 100 years, generations of Spartans have made the name stand for something bigger.
If you know more about the origins of the Spartan nickname, contact msutoday@msu.edu.
